Meijer, Luke wrote:
> It is obvious you want something that you know you cant get.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man."
-- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Yep, i am an an unreasonable man. Me being an unreasonable man lead
me to start to use Linux in 1995, starting two open source projects
(at least one of which I'm sure you have installed on your machine)
and maintaining them to this day. It also resulted in my getting
a reasonably well paid job at a small high tech startup where at
least 95% of my work is Linux related development.
While we as Linux users put up with the status quo we will continue
to be rode rough-shod over by microsoft and the companies like Dell
and HP who do under the table deals with them. These deals are what
is keeping microsoft where it is and preventing the spread of Linux.
> I was in the exact same situation with my Dell XPS 1330 purchase
> as Ubuntu was an option for US Dell customers only.
So why the fsck can't people in this global backwater get the same
deal?
I know of at least one survey which showed that Australia has a
larger number of Linux and Free Software developers per head of
population than any other country in the world.
> I chose to go ahead and accept the ~$100 MS tax and build it with
> Linux the same day it arrived.
Yep, you and the millions of other people who did this help microsoft
fund the SCO debacle and ramming its broken standard thru ISO, in the
process breaking ISO. I hope you're pleased with yourself.
> For someone who's time is so valuable and wants to drop ~$2000K
> on something 'high end' I really think $100 is not a lot of money
> for piece of mind on guaranteed driver support.
You're an "Open Source" kinda guy aren't you? Well I'm much more
in the "Free Software" camp.
> It just seems from your responses that you are already aware of
> the choices and this is more of a chance to 'vent' rather than a
> request for help.
First, you obviously don't understand my motivations. Secondly,
I have found one single supplier of laptops (other than netbooks)
with Linux pre-installed, Pioneer Computers:
http://pioneercomputers.com.au/
That is not a huge choice. Remeber, I chose Linux. I like choice.
I'd like to have two or three companies to chose from. I don't
think that is unreasonable.
Erik
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Erik de Castro Lopo
http://www.mega-nerd.com/
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